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This past Saturday, Maurice and I were invited to hunt an awesome site out in Western Kansas (Thank you Keith!). The scenery was Dances With Wolves beautiful and the history of the area is fascinating; a history which includes (it is claimed) Custer himself.

It was a great hunt on a beautiful day with some great company. I always believed that I would never find a three ringer bullet unless I went East, to the hallowed fields of the Civil War. But I was wrong. I found my first three ringer bullet at this site. I will post a picture of it later. Although slightly flattened, the bullet is complete. I found two other three ringers but they were heavily damaged, I would guess when they made contact with a person or an American Bison (known around these parts as Buffalo). I also found a pouchful of cartridges, most of them as old as the history of the place. All in all it was a fantastic trip, one which I hope to make again.

Today at lunch, I went to Riverside park to begin one of many experiments regarding masking. I posit that there are many coins that are being masked by deep iron. So I’ve decided to spend 30 minutes every hunt digging deep iron signals. Today, I dug 9 iron signals. Only the second iron signal revealed an hitherto masked coin. I am excited because although the ratio of iron to non-iron targets in this experiment was 9:1, I am betting that all coins being masked by deep iron are very old coins. This coin was a dateless Buff but I think I can make a very faint 16 at the end of the date, which could conceivably make this Buff a 1916 coin. I will keep you posted.

I went to Riverside park at lunch time today. Maurice was itching to find some silver. It was cold and windy but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

I actually went looking for gold. It has been a while since I found any of the yellow stuff. Plus, I need the cash; to get me one of them Blisstools.

So there I was looking for pull tab signals when I run into my first old coin; a dateless Buffalo. A little later I got a screamer of a dime signal and produced a 1977 clad dime. A few feet away, I got another screaming dime signal. Thinking that I was going to pull out another clad dime, imagine my surprise when I saw that shinny 1939 Mercury dime!

At the end, besides the coins, I ended up with 6 pull tabs and about a dozen pieces of can slaw. It seems to me, judging by the endless foil signals, that someone lined up a dozen or so aluminum cans and just ran the mower on top of them. Can slaw is at the top of my most hated trash to dig up. Alas, I have to take the bad with the good.

I returned to the park with my XP Deus metal detector. I was aiming to spend some careful time at the spot I hunted yesterday (for the 1000th time).

Right away I hit a couple of clusters of pull tabs. Amazing that these were not picked up by me on the previous 999 times I hunted this particular spot. Then I hit a 1944 wheat. Some guy approached me to ask about the hobby. As he shadowed me, I dug some trash. Then he watched me dig the 1919 Buffalo. He thought the coin was valuable. I had to tell him the truth of the matter. Still, he thought the Buff was a really neat coin (and it is!). After he left, I hit yet another wheat, this time a 1941. Hard to believe.

As I was walking to my car I got a nice repeatable foil signal with a non-shifting target id. Thinking it may be gold I went for it. Instead of gold I found a stud earring with the unmistakable silver sheen. I had to wait until I got home to look for markings.

It would be really nice if I found silver every time I went out this year. Come on, a guy can dream!

I am glad to have a standby park that will provide me with silver in lean times. I have spoken about this park extensively in the past and I am happy to know that other people have began to hunt it besides me. I know there are 1000’s of coins still under that dirt, alas, a little too deep for most detectors today. I plan on buying a Russian detector later this year that will hopefully get me to those coins.

Anyway, I decided to hunt the ol’ standby at lunch today in spite of a light drizzle falling and getting everything wet. By the way, the XP Deus is almost water proof as the stock headphones are rain proof. If you remove the controller and put it in your pocket (or in a zip lock bag) you’re good to go in the rain.

It was a good hunt:

A dateless Buffalo (only the second one this year), a 1946 wheat, and a 1958 Roosevelt dime. The button is kind of cool too. It reminds me of the coat buttons of the 50’s and 60’s.

So this year has been very different than last year, both in the time dedicated to the hobby and in the number of finds but I won’t complain too much as I am very blessed elsewhere. Perhaps this year will be a year of quality instead of quantity. I mean, I already found a Shield nickel, who knows what else is around the corner?

Since it was a beautiful Fall day, I decided to take Maurice for a Seated coin search to the large park near my job. I have Seated fever now, thanks to my friend Steveouke, who had the audacity to find a Seated quarter the other day (Congrats again Steve!). Unfortunately, I only had 30 minutes or so to spend so I hit the dirt fast and furious(ly).

As it turned out, it was a productive 30 minutes. No, I didn’t find my Seated but I managed to extract a cool 1943 Merc and a 1936 Buffalo nickel from the park. Oh, I found a tiny alien parabolic antena. Ok, it’s either that or an old copper earring.

So my Seated drought continues for yet another day. I KNOW there is a Seated coin in them parks. I just gotta find it. 🙂

With all the other things going on in my life, my detecting time has diminished greatly. I decided however, that 30 minutes of hunting at lunch time was better than no hunting at all so I resumed my lunch hour hunts and after a few days of covering the park where I found the last war nickel my XP Deus hit on two cool coins:

The first was a 1919 Buffalo nickel. The Buffs I find usually don’t have a visible date but this one does so I will post about it. Because of the all iron nails at this park (don’t know why there are so many), this nickel came up as a square pull tab. The signal was sweet however and I opted to see what it was.

The second coin was a well worn 1899 Barber dime. This guy was mixed in with some aluminum foil so the signal was a warble of mid and high tones. Again, the sweetness of the high tones made me dig it.

I think this small park has many, many more coins and I aim to dig them all up. Wish me luck.

I have been trying to make sense of the new software in my Deus metal detector. Honestly, I was beginning to get a little bit frustrated but I knew that it was just a matter of time before things started to make sense. This morning I hit my deep silver park and went over some of the areas I have hunted regularly for two years. Amazingly, I managed to pull some nickels from the 1940’s (no war nickels unfortunately) and then I found this 1939 D Mercurydime:

A little later, I found a worn Buffalo nickel with no discernable date:

With the new program I am using, I have been finding nickels at every hunt but I also find a lot of square pull tabs and a lot of beaver tails from the old style pull tabs. I don’t mind however, because I am likely to find gold if I keep digging those signals.

From my deep silver park, a 1936 Buffalo nickel and an old sterling silver ring that I broke during extraction:

No silver coins although I get the feeling many silver coins will forthcoming soon! Why?…

MAURICE HAS A NEW BRAIN!!!!

Yep, the software on the Deus has been upgraded to version 3. I took it out for a quick spin this afternoon and quickly got targets out of a spot in the park that had long since dried up, even with the Deus! Version 3 has a number of improvements and additions one of which may become my hunting standard. Right away I can go deeper. There is a noticeable increase on the strength of the small, deep beeps. Also, the Deus is noticeably better on the iron. Instead of getting my usual iron wrap-around, many of the iron signals actually came in with the VDI of 00. The other thing that just blew my mind is how much faster the thing is! All of that plus a bucket full of new features is sure to increase my silver count.

I haven’t found any silver coins in the last week. I have been hunting dirt that is likely to produce a Seated coin but I have not found one yet. I did find this cool Buffalo nickel at Riverside park the other day:

I can’t make the date on it.

Besides this Buff, I have found a number of wheats here and there and a few relics with some degree of coolness to them.

Yesterday, I forgot my Deus (gasp!) but I was lucky to have my Compadre with me. I used it to clean up some pull tabs from a favorite spot of mine and at about the 16th pull tab I found what I thought was gold. Alas! it was not to be solid gold but some gold plated lead-like metal.

At any rate, the XP Deus version 3 update is looming large and it promises to improve an already magnificent machine. World domination is at my fingertips.

And I guess I have to do a bit of explaining now. The other day, Tuesday night I think, I read a post on a Deus users forum whereas a well respected and acknowledged guru of the Deus recommended doing a couple of things to the Deus that run counter to popular opinion. What he recommends will kill some of the depth that I have been getting with the Deus lately BUT, the guru contends that being able to unmask the shallow to medium deep targets more than makes up for losing depth.

So yesterday, Wednesday, I took Maurice to the park to try these new settings even though, because of the rain, I wasn’t going to dig anything (couldn’t risk getting muddy as I work in an office and I see clients). In no more than 10 minutes I got 7 to 8 signals in a spot I’ve hunted A LOT that were not there before! I was ASTOUNDED. I was BEWILDERED. I was PARSIMONIOUS. (I don’t know what that last word means). I immediately called Steveouke to share this new thing with him. I know he knows the park I was at and I know he knows what a cruel mistress that park can be. Why, if I mined all the iron out of that park I may become a steel magnate. A rusty steel magnate.

But I didn’t dig any of the signals so who knows?!

Today, although I really didn’t have time to hunt at lunch time, I couldn’t resist the curiosity and I decided to hit the park again. It was cold and cloudy and the wind was probably blowing a good 15Mph but it wasn’t raining. I walked around the spot for a couple of minutes and I couldn’t find any of the signals from yesterday. Argghhhhh!!! Finally, I came upon a shallow signal with a VDI of 92 which at 12KHz on the Deus is a solid silver dime.
I thought to myself “This is not one of yesterdays signals but oh well”. I cut a 4 inch plug and at the bottom of the plug there was this mass with a shiny silver edge. My brain didn’t immediately understand what I was looking at:

It wasn’t until I looked at one of the smaller discs on each side of the shiny-edge circle that I saw it was a V nickel! What!!?? This bundle of joy was only 4 inches deep. How did I miss it before? I tell you how: IRON MASKING.

I called Stevouke and since he works only a couple of blocks away from this park, he asked that I come over so he could see the old coin sandwich.

We ran some hot water over it and we could see that one of the coins on the side was a Buffalo nickel and the other was a V nickel. But what was in the middle?

Ta- da! My second Stander of the year. Out of a park that to my knowledge has yielded no coins for a while (except to Maurice and I).

Both the Standing Liberty quarter and the Buffalo have no dates. Actually, you can see the last number of the date on the Buffalo and it is a 9.

The V nickel is dated 1908. That’s two V nickels out of this park in a week.

And I stuck to my guns and pulled silver out of here, which I’ve been telling Stevo I would.

Will this new setting hold? Will I find the other 8 signals that I am sure are coins again? Who invented liquid soap and why?